More Spaghetti

So, I walked into a room today and a man involuntarily stood up. And I thought to myself, "Now that's a conditioned response!"
Turned out it was, in that he'd been trained for many years to treat women with deference and respect.

I got to thinking about that. Why do we (or did we) train young men to open doors for the "fair sex," pay for dinner, offer their seats, tip their hats? There may be a lot of reasons, but since I'm a woman and my brain relates everything to everything else, this thought and a killer dvd on marriage I saw the other day got together and informed each other. Basic premise of the dvd in a nutshell is: marriage, like any other relationship, is designed by God to perfect us, to make us more like Him, in short, to make us Holy. It is actually a recent idea (1100 AD actually, seriously helped along by the Romantics of the 1600-1800--- sorry, Bella, this includes Keats) that marriage is the place to find our greatest happiness. I'll butcher it if I keep going-- get the dvd-- I'm serious, do it-- but the practical application of Holiness vs. Happiness is that the focus shifts from What Can I Get Out Of Marriage to, in his words, How Can I Love My Spouse In A Way They've Never Been Loved Before? It's a Give mentality instead of a Get mentality. (Which is awesome, because as Ria put it brilliantly here, the man of our dreams is a figment of our, well, dreams.)
Still with me? So, if this is now a Giving Game, then we girls get to figure out how best to love our men (R-E-S-P-E-C-T, ladies, respect), and you guys get to figure our how best to love us.
Turns out what we desire most is to be valued. Opened doors and the tipped hats project value onto the recipient of the courtesy. Somewhere, somewhen, someone figured it out. (Probably God.) It's marvelous, really, how little has to be done for us to feel we are worth something. It's not about craving special treatment, it's not about thinking we somehow deserve to be worshiped by subservience. It's about kind and gentle behavior because you want us to know you are intent on communicating love in ways we understand. I remember the day I explained to my darling dad that I didn't want flowers because I'm a girl and the culture says guys are supposed to bring me flowers. I wanted flowers because I like flowers. A lot. Some girls don't. I do. That freed him up to Give in the relationship without feeling manipulated by society. Now I need to figure out how he feels loved.

So, end questions: have you noticed how God does this very thing for you? How do you feel loved? What can you do to Give in your many and varied relationships instead of Get? And what does it look like when you do that same thing with God? I'd love to hear people's takes on this.